ABSTRACT
After the seminar of 1959-60, the term das Ding disappears almost entirely from Lacan’s work. However, the ideas associated with it provide the essential features of the new developments in the concept of the objet petit a as Lacan develops it from 1963 onwards. For example the objet petit a is circled by the drive (S11, 168), and is seen as the cause of desire just as das Ding is seen as ‘the cause of the most fundamental human passion’ (S7, 97). Also, the fact that the Thing is not the imaginary object but firmly in the register of the real (S7, 112), and yet is ‘that which in the real suffers from the signifier’ (S7, 125), anticipates the transition in Lacan’s thought towards locating objet petit a increasingly in the register of the real from 1963 on.
